Living with Toddlers is like a Prison Camp

I'm joking—mostly

In my late teens I read every book about prison camps I could get my hands on. I think my interest at the time was about half morbid fascination with the horrors humans inflict upon one another, and half idealistic admiration for the nobility and heroism that some people have shown in the face of such treatment.

And so when I picked up One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I found it unsatisfying, and so boring that I never got past the first few pages. I wanted heroes fighting and defeating tyrants, and Ivan Denisovich disappointed me. So I put the book down and read something more sensational and romantic.

Now that I’m a thirty-something mom with four small children, I no longer want to read about Soviet prison camps. I still believe in heroes, but I’m more interested in how to live well in my own circumstances than under conditions that I sincerely and hope pray will never afflict me. Children have a way of bringing perspective. Imagining yourself heroically resisting the NKVD is one thing; imagining your child suffering the same fate is something else entirely. 

It was easy to imagine I would have the courage to resist such evil when I was young and single. Having experienced both the self-erasing pain of childbirth and the love for my family, I no longer want to even think about such things. 

So when I recently picked up Ivan Denisovich again, on the recommendation of my husband, I looked at it with very different eyes. And found it beautiful. 

For anyone not familiar with Solzhenitsyn’s work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is exactly that: a play-by-play account of a single day in the life of a prisoner in one of Siberia’s worst labor camps. Shukhov is hungry and cold, beaten down by oppressive regimentation, and even the prospect of possible future release brings little hope. As a portrait of life in the Gulag, Ivan Denisovich is detailed and accurate. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn lived through the labor camps, and knew what he was writing about. The neverending hunger, the constant battle against the cold with insufficient clothing—in one scene the guards inspect the prisoners to make sure they aren’t wearing any extra “non regulation” clothes, making them strip off their shirts in the biting cold.

But all of this is background. Ivan Denisovich is not sensational. It does not dwell on the gory details. Nor is Shukhov’s story romantic. Shukhov doesn’t mount a revolt against the unjust system. He doesn’t even plan an escape. But what he does is somehow more inspiring. 

Despite the dehumanizing system, Shukhov maintains a certain dignity. He empathizes even with the guards. He is loyal to his friends—and while he takes every opportunity to get a little extra food or warmth, there are things he disdains to do. He will not beg. Instead he finds ways to be useful to other prisoners, like mending their coats. 

Most importantly, he takes pride in his work. He’s a carpenter, but he also knows how to lay brick, and when his team is assigned to build a wall—even though it’s so cold the mortar freezes in the hods—he insists that it be done well. He goes to great lengths to make sure he gets to use his special mortar trowel, the one that feels right in his hand. He carefully sets up his plumb line and does extra work to make sure that the wall he builds will be a good one—though he will not be rewarded for it. He becomes so wrapped up in it that, not wanting to waste the last bit of mortar, he actually risks getting into serious trouble and angering all the other prisoners by staying late to finish. 

On the face of it, what Shukhov does is stupid. Why risk trouble to finish the work he’s being slave-driven to? Shouldn’t he conserve his limited energy and do the bare minimum, since he won’t get any reward for it? 

If I’d gotten to this scene the first time I picked up the book, I think that is exactly what I would have thought. But then I had no idea what a luxury it can be to just work. To just do a project from start to finish, without interference. I had no idea what a pleasure it can be to have good tools, and do work you can be proud of. 

Shukhov doesn’t fully understand it himself, but he has to build that wall and build it well if he is to stay alive. If he loses his craft, his pride in his work, he will lose himself.

There are a lot of ways to read the scene: 

Shukhov is in a flow state as he lays brick, and flow states are inherently pleasurable, even if the work being done is hard. 

Shukhov is good at laying brick, and so for those few hours, he has a sort of importance. The self-important supervisor can’t lay brick as well as he can. The other guys have to run him bricks and mortar to keep him going. They are under his orders as long as he is wielding that trowel. 

But what struck me most forcibly about the scene is that he keeps going when the cut-off whistle blows. He insists on using up the last mortar rather than wasting it. It pains him to see good materials and good work go to waste. He risks trouble to just finish the job off to his own satisfaction. 

This aspect of the scene struck me because the night before I read it, I had stayed up late to fold laundry. Not because I thought I had to, but because I wanted to. I should have been in bed catching up on lost sleep, but instead I was folding laundry, and luxuriating in the fact that no one was going to stop me. It’s not that I love doing laundry. It’s that I love doing what I’m doing. I love being able to finish a project, and with four kids I almost never get the opportunity to do it. I start loading the dishwasher, and I have to quit half-way through to feed the baby so the stuff gets dried on the dishes and the washer can’t get it all off. I start sweeping the floor, but have to stop to change a diaper and get someone food and sort out a fight and by then the toddler has pushed a dump truck through my pile of dust seventeen times and it’s scattered all over the floor again…and then it’s time to make supper. 

My life sometimes feels like an unending succession of unfinished tasks and wasted work. I get something half-way sorted only to have someone dump it out as soon as my back is turned. I clean the wall only to have a child draw on them with markers again. 

Sometimes I hear other ladies talk about what they do when they have a babysitter: shopping, scrolling social media, going out for coffee. When I get a babysitter, I work. I write. I sew. Sometimes I even clean. And I look forward to it all week. Those few hours a week where I can just do what I’m doing until it’s done. Where I can do something I’m good at, something I can be proud of, something that lasts. 

I do not live in the gulag. I have plenty to eat, a house that is warm in winter and cool in summer, and the freedom to be with my husband and children whom I love. 

But I, like Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, have something in myself that wants to build. Something that would shrivel and die without an outlet, leaving me diminished.

Shukhov in the gulag would lose his humanity if he had no work he could take pride in.

And so will we.